The Call Every College Parent Fears: Indiana's Missing Students, Murders, and Campus Tragedies

Photo of Peter Donahue, from Jefferson City MO, a Sophmore Transfer Student from Loyola Rome to his dream school, the University of Notre Dame, told a former classmate from his prior school that he had been drinking and was molested/"raped" by a priest and then he disappeared from campus , found dead in the desert outside of Las Vegas years later. Then In 2002, ND's Father Joyce wrongly claimed a student was “the first missing” from ND’s campus, but Donahue was more than 20 years ealrlier. (HE Michiana Bureau original reporting.)

As the school year starts, the streaming documentary about a Canadian university student who disappeared without a trace in September 1992 led the Hoosier Enquirer to ask a disturbing question closer to home: What similar disappearances, murders and unexpected tragedies are hidden in the histories of Indiana's colleges and universities, (in order of student population size)?

A true-crime series now streaming online begins with an event every parent of a college student can instantly understand—and fear.

On September 21, 1992, Allan “Kenley” Matheson, a 20-year-old first-year student at Acadia University, disappeared from the small university town of Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Matheson had been at Acadia only a short time. Then he was simply gone.

More than three decades later, his disappearance remains unresolved.

The investigative documentary series Missing Kenley revisits Matheson's life, disappearance, the original investigation and theories about what could have happened to him. The five-episode series is now available through major streaming platforms, bringing a 1992 Canadian missing-person case before a new generation of viewers.

It is compelling because the mystery is real. Kenley Matheson wasn't a fictional character invented for television. He had parents, friends, a dormitory room and plans for his future. His family sent him to college expecting the experience millions of families expect: education, independence and eventually a career.

Instead, he disappeared.

Watching Matheson's story led the Hoosier Enquirer to ask a question closer to home, inspiring the following compilaiton which is likely not a full listing of all, but as much of a full list to date compiled by any Indiana News Organization:

What are Indiana's Kenley Matheson stories?

What students disappeared after their parents sent them to an Indiana college? Which were murdered? Which families received telephone calls informing them that the dormitory, campus, highway, airplane or ordinary night out that seemed perfectly safe had become the setting for catastrophe?

The answer required looking institution by institution.

Every August, cars packed with clothes, computers, televisions and bedding stream toward Bloomington, West Lafayette, Muncie, Terre Haute, South Bend, Indianapolis, Evansville and smaller Indiana college towns. Parents carry boxes into dormitories, meet roommates, take photographs, hug their children goodbye and begin the drive home. For most families, another photograph follows several years later: cap, gown and diploma.

Indiana higher education, however, also has a collection of darker stories. Students have disappeared. Students have been murdered. Young people have drowned or died in accidents. A student was electrocuted inside a Purdue building while searchers were looking for him. A Taylor University crash killed students and produced an almost unimaginable mistaken identity. An entire University of Evansville basketball team boarded an airplane that remained airborne for barely 90 seconds.

This is not an assertion that Indiana colleges are generally dangerous. They aren't. Many of these events are separated by decades, some occurred far from campus and several weren't crimes at all. Nor should every premature student death be converted into “true crime.”

The Hoosier Enquirer instead searched Indiana's major colleges and universities for documented disappearances, murders and extraordinary tragedies. The institutions below are arranged roughly from larger student bodies to smaller ones. Schools for which our research did not uncover a sufficiently documented comparable historical case are listed separately at the end.

Indiana University Bloomington

Few Indiana college communities understand the word “missing” quite like Bloomington.

Lauren Spierer, 20, disappeared during the early morning hours of June 3, 2011, following a night out with friends. She was last reported seen near 11th Street and College Avenue around 4:30 a.m. She never returned home and has never been found. Fifteen years later, her disappearance remains one of Indiana's most recognizable missing-person mysteries.

But Spierer wasn't the first IU student whose disappearance mystified Indiana.

Ann Louise Harmeier, 20, disappeared September 12, 1977, while returning to Bloomington. Her overheated Pontiac was discovered along State Road 37 north of Martinsville with its doors locked and emergency flashers operating. Thirty-six days later, Harmeier's body was discovered in a cornfield. Indiana State Police say she had been strangled with a shoelace. Her murder remains a cold case.

Jill Behrman disappeared while taking a bicycle ride in May 2000. Her remains were discovered three years later, and the prosecution arising from her murder subsequently produced years of litigation.

Hannah Wilson, 22, was an IU senior approaching graduation in 2015 when she disappeared following a night out in Bloomington. Her body was discovered in Brown County, and Daniel Messel was convicted of murdering her.

Then there was Joseph Smedley, an IU student who disappeared in 2015. His body was recovered from Griffy Lake. Authorities ruled his death a suicide by drowning and said they did not suspect foul play, although members of his family publicly questioned the circumstances.

These cases shouldn't be conflated. Some are murders, one remains an unresolved disappearance and another was officially determined to be suicide. What connects them is the terrible moment when somebody realized a student was supposed to be somewhere and wasn't.

Indiana University Indianapolis — Formerly IUPUI

Molly Dattilo was 23 when she disappeared from Indianapolis on July 6, 2004. She was primarily an Eastern Kentucky University student but was taking summer courses at IUPUI, predecessor to today's IU Indianapolis and Purdue University in Indianapolis.

Dattilo disappeared without taking the belongings one might expect someone deliberately abandoning her life to take. She has never been found, and the FBI continues to list her as a missing person.

Indianapolis also had the 2000 murder of Crystal Maxey, 29, identified in contemporary IUPUI student-newspaper reporting as an IUPUI student. Because that killing occurred at her Indianapolis residence rather than on campus, it should properly be understood as the murder of a university student rather than an IUPUI campus homicide.

Ball State University

Michael Dean Riley, a 22-year-old Ball State psychology student, disappeared in 1976 and was subsequently found dead.

Because significant details appearing in modern retellings deserve additional verification against original police and newspaper records, the Hoosier Enquirer would be cautious about treating every contemporary account as established fact.

Another well-documented Ball State tragedy involves Jennifer “Jenny” Haskell. The Ball State senior was critically injured in the catastrophic Indiana State Fair stage collapse on August 13, 2011, and died six days later.

Haskell wasn't killed at Ball State, but she was a Cardinal whose unexpected death deeply affected the university community.

Notre Dame Students and Chernobyl — 1986

When the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in Soviet Ukraine in April 1986, approximately 35 Notre Dame students were participating in an overseas program in the region, placing Hoosier families thousands of miles away from their children as the dimensions of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster slowly became known.

Contemporary Notre Dame student-newspaper coverage reported that students were moved from their accommodations amid uncertainty about radioactive fallout and complaints that Soviet authorities had failed to provide adequate warning. Students were scheduled to remain overseas until the end of June.

No Notre Dame student appears to have died as a result of the episode, so it should not be placed in the article's list of fatalities. But perhaps there is more to that story, too.

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame's history contains several very different tragedies.

Chad Sharon, an 18-year-old freshman, disappeared in December 2002 after leaving an off-campus party. His whereabouts remained unknown for approximately two months until his body was recovered from the St. Joseph River. His death was determined to be an accidental drowning.

In January 2020, Annrose Jerry, a 21-year-old senior, disappeared on campus. Her body was subsequently recovered from Saint Mary's Lake.

Then there was the student football videographer from Chicago, Declan Sullivan, the 20-year-old student killed falling from his filming perch in October 2010 when his elevated hydraulic scissor lift toppled while filming a football practice in very high winds under new coach Brian Kelly.

His death resulted in an Indiana workplace-safety investigation, OSHA fines, wrongful death settlement, and became one of the darkest episodes in modern Notre Dame athletics.

Notre Dame's campus also experienced the 1975 killing of Helen Tobolski, a 62-year-old custodial worker shot inside an aerospace building. She wasn't a student, but her killing belongs in a historical examination of serious violence on university property.

The aboved photo and caption which discussed story of a Notre Dame student named Peter "Pete" Donahue, allegedly disappearing around 1979 or 1980 before being discovered dead near Las Vegas a year later. According to a source located by HE, Donahue was distraught after claiming he was sexually molested by a priest when he went missing. He was likely the first ND Student to go missing.

The 1992 Notre Dame Women's Swimming Team Bus Crash On a Snow Covered Bridge Over the St. Joseph River on the Indiana Toll Road

Notre Dame experienced another parent's nightmare on January 24, 1992, when a bus carrying the women's swimming team a few miles from campus, returning from a meet at Northwestern University crashed on the Indiana Toll Road during dangerous winter conditions. The bus overturned, killing freshmen swimmers Margaret “Meghan” Beeler, of Granger, Indiana, and Colleen Hipp, 19, of St. Louis, Missouri. and injuring other members of the team.

The tragedy became part of the permanent history of Notre Dame athletics.

The university subsequently established the Beeler-Hipp Award in their memory, ensuring that the two freshmen who never completed their first year at Notre Dame would continue to be remembered by generations of Fighting Irish swimmers.

University of Southern Indiana

The University of Southern Indiana experienced an extraordinary succession of student deaths in 2001 when three students died within roughly a month.

Jeremy Weil died in a drowning accident during a Florida trip. Freshman Michelle Alexander was killed in an Evansville traffic collision, while freshman Hailey Major died after being ejected from an automobile.

USI also has a connection to the horrific 1992 Evansville C-130 crash into a hotel and restaurant complex. USI student Charles Bergwitz, two former students and fathers of two students were among those killed, while two USI continuing-education instructors conducting a seminar survived.

Indiana State University

The Pamela Milam case belongs among Indiana's most disturbing college murders.

The 19-year-old Indiana State student disappeared following a sorority event in September 1972. She was subsequently found bound and gagged inside the trunk of her automobile on the Terre Haute campus.

Her killing remained unresolved for decades before investigators using genetic genealogy identified deceased suspect Jeffrey Lynn Hand as her suspected killer.

Indiana State also suffered tremendous grief in 2022 when a vehicle carrying ISU students crashed, killing three people, including football players. That wasn't a campus crime, but it was another reminder that a university community's worst day can occur beyond campus boundaries.

Butler University

Butler has experienced several very different losses.

Junior Tyler James was found unresponsive inside his on-campus Apartment Village residence in 2021. University police's initial review indicated no foul play.

That same year, Butler student and photographer Xan Korman was shot while away from Indiana in Maryland and subsequently died.

Butler also has a connection to international terrorism through Peter Kassig**, who attended Butler in 2011-12. Kassig later became a humanitarian aid worker, was abducted in Syria and murdered by ISIS in 2014. He wasn't a Butler student at the time and wasn't killed in Indiana, but his death profoundly affected members of the Indianapolis university community who had known him.

Valparaiso University

Valparaiso University graduate student Varun Raj Pucha was attacked at a local Planet Fitness in 2023.

Pucha, an international student from India pursuing graduate studies, was stabbed in the head and subsequently died. A murder prosecution followed.

The attack occurred away from campus, but Pucha's death illustrates an important reality of college safety: students don't live entirely within university boundaries. They shop, work, exercise and socialize throughout their surrounding communities.

Taylor University

Taylor University experienced one of Indiana higher education's most extraordinary tragedies on April 26, 2006, when a tractor-trailer crossed the median and struck a university van.

Students Laurel Erb, Brad Larson, Betsy Smith and Laura Van Ryn, along with Taylor employee Monica Felver, died.

Then tragedy became almost unimaginable. Authorities mistakenly identified Whitney Cerak as one of the dead while identifying Laura Van Ryn as the critically injured survivor. Cerak's family held Whitney's funeral while the Van Ryn family remained beside the hospitalized woman believing they were caring for Laura.

As the survivor recovered enough to communicate, the truth emerged: the woman in the hospital was Whitney Cerak. Laura Van Ryn had actually died and been buried under Whitney's identity.

One family learned that the daughter it had buried was alive. Another learned that the daughter it believed was recovering had died.

Taylor later constructed its Memorial Prayer Chapel in memory of those lost.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Rose-Hulman has its own chapter in this history.

In September 1998, an unauthorized experiment involving a homemade explosive went catastrophically wrong near the Terre Haute campus. David A. Rosefield, a 19-year-old California Institute of Technology student visiting Rose-Hulman, suffered fatal injuries after the device exploded prematurely.

Contemporary reporting connected Rose-Hulman student Matthew Roesle, also 19, to the construction of the devices and reported that the explosive material had been prepared in a campus residence hall. The incident was neither a murder nor disappearance, but it was an extraordinary campus tragedy involving conduct that no parent could reasonably anticipate when sending a child to college.

More recently, Rose-Hulman lost Erin Canning, a freshman engineering-design student and goalkeeper on the women's soccer team, after an off-campus accident in September 2021. The university community subsequently gathered to remember her.

University of Evansville

December 13, 1977, stands apart in Indiana college history.

A chartered DC-3 carrying the University of Evansville men's basketball team took off from Evansville's airport and crashed approximately 90 seconds later. All *29 people aboard died*, including:

Players: Kevin Kingston, John Ed Washington, Warren Alston, Mark Siegel, Mike Duff, Bryan Taylor, Keith Moon, Steve Miller, Mark Musgrave, Tom Leet, John Edson, Greg Smith, David Furr, Robert Hudson

Coaching/team personnel and university associates: Bobby Watson, George “Moose” Miller, Bob Hudson, Charles Goad, David Sanders, Daniel Shipp, Marvin Bates, Bill Hall, Gary West, John Lander

Flight crew: William Hannah, Richard Dennis, William Small, James Stewart, Robert Allen

The University of Evansville remembers the catastrophe as “The Night It Rained Tears.” Nearly half a century later, UE continues to remember the victims at Memorial Plaza. The persistence of those commemorations demonstrates something statistics cannot: university tragedies don't end when news coverage stops. They become part of an institution's identity and, for families, part of every tradition, birthday and anniversary that follows.

Saint Mary's College

One of Saint Mary's College's most nationally publicized tragedies involved Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg, a 19-year-old freshman who died officially by suicide in 2010.

Seeberg had previously reported an alleged sexual assault involving a high profile Notre Dame football player. Her death and the handling of her allegation subsequently generated extensive national reporting. This was a national story and yet there is 30 for 30 or documentary, yet, that HE could find.

The circumstances require precision. Her allegation, the institutional response and her death can all be examined, but one should not assert a causal relationship that available evidence doesn't establish.

Wabash College

Wabash experienced a frightening campus emergency in February 2016 when a college employee was identified as a suspect in a double homicide committed away from campus.

The college locked down while authorities searched for the suspect, who was later cornered in Indianapolis and died by suicide.

No Wabash student was murdered in that incident, but for parents receiving emergency messages while their sons sheltered on campus, the distinction would have provided little immediate reassurance.

Anderson University

Anderson appears in historical campus-fire material in connection with the death of a student in an off-campus apartment fire in 2001.

Because readily available historical compilations don't provide the level of primary-source verification needed for all the details, the Hoosier Enquirer would not expand upon that incident without additional contemporary reporting or official records.

Hanover College

Hanover's great historical campus catastrophe came from nature rather than a criminal.

During the April 3, 1974 Super Outbreak, a tornado devastated Hanover College, damaging 32 of the institution's 33 buildings. Two were destroyed and six sustained major structural damage. Parents went into panic seeing the damages.

Remarkably, nobody was killed or seriously injured. Hanover therefore represents the rare story in this investigation in which the ingredients for enormous loss of life were present, but the worst outcome never came, thankfully.

22 Schools Where Our Search Found No Comparable Documented History*

The Hoosier Enquirer also searched the histories of the following institutions but did not uncover a sufficiently documented historic student murder, unresolved disappearance or extraordinary fatal campus incident comparable to the cases above:

Ivy Tech Community College; Purdue University Fort Wayne; Purdue University Northwest; University of Indianapolis; Trine University; Marian University; Indiana University South Bend; Indiana University Southeast; Indiana University East; Indiana University Northwest; Indiana University Kokomo; Indiana University Columbus; Indiana University Fort Wayne; Grace College; DePauw University; Huntington University; Manchester University; Franklin College; Goshen College; Oakland City University; Holy Cross College; Earlham College; and Vincennes University.

*That statement requires an important qualification. *Our search found no comparable documented history” does not mean “nothing bad has ever happened there.” Some of these institutions have existed for well over a century, while digitized newspaper archives are incomplete. Students from every university have died in automobile crashes, from illnesses, by suicide and through crimes having no meaningful connection to their schools.

The purpose of this investigation is not to attach every student's death to the institution he or she attended. It is to identify unusual cases with a meaningful university connection and enough reliable documentation to report them responsibly.

What Parents Should Ask Before Leaving Campus

The conclusion from this history shouldn't be that parents should fear sending their children to Indiana colleges. The overwhelming majority of students arrive, study, graduate and return home safely.

The better lesson is preparation. Parents should know how to reach campus police rather than relying only on 911. Families should understand the university's missing-student procedure, and students living in residence halls should designate emergency contacts.

More importantly, families should have a simple conversation before move-in day: Who will notice if you don't come home?

Is it a roommate, teammate, boyfriend, girlfriend, fraternity brother, sorority sister or parent? How long will that person wait before calling someone? Does anyone know where the student intended to go?

Kenley Matheson disappeared in a small Canadian university town in 1992. Lauren Spierer disappeared in Bloomington in 2011. Molly Dattilo disappeared in Indianapolis in 2004.

Their families began with the same question: Where did they go?

For some families in this article, eventually there was an answer.

For others their fears materialize. For still others, there has been neither -- and for most but for the grace of God go I.

When the Nightmare Happens an Ocean Away

The fear of sending a child away to college doesn't stop at the edge of an Indiana campus. For thousands of Hoosier students, college also means studying, researching or serving abroad—and Indiana universities have experienced tragedies thousands of miles from home.

Indiana University medical student Abigail Brinkman died in an accident at sea while completing a medical elective in Belize. Her memory now lives through an IU scholarship that helps other medical students undertake international clinical rotations there.

At IUPUI, Samantha “Sam” Hale, 21, was participating in a four-week study-abroad and service-learning program in Greece in 2012 when she fell from a fourth-floor balcony on the program's final night. She died in an Athens hospital three weeks later.

Notre Dame's history is even older. Its pioneering Innsbruck program, launched in the 1960s, endured multiple early tragedies. Michael M. Leahy died in a motor-scooter accident in Milan, Jerome Witzel died in an automobile crash in Belgrade, and Michael J. Donahue, 19, died during a trip to Tunis while enrolled in the Innsbruck program. Decades later, Notre Dame junior Andrew Bunikis died in a bus crash in Thailand while continuing international service work that began through a university student program.

For parents, these cases add another dimension to the college goodbye. A child isn't merely sleeping in a dormitory two hours down the interstate. He or she may be in Austria, Belize, Greece or Thailand, where an emergency can unfold across languages, borders and time zones before a parent even learns something has happened.

The Empty Bedroom

Look at the names again: Kenley Matheson, Lauren Spierer, Ann Louise Harmeier, Jill Behrman, Hannah Wilson, Molly Dattilo, Pamela Milam, Wade Steffey, Andrew Boldt, Varun Chheda, Chad Sharon, Annrose Jerry, Declan Sullivan, Jenny Haskell, Erin Canning and Varun Raj Pucha, along with the students who climbed into a Taylor University van and the University of Evansville basketball players who boarded an airplane on December 13, 1977.

They were young people worrying about examinations, friendships, relationships, money and what they might do after graduatioTheir parents once carried boxes into dormitories just like thousands of Indiana parents will do again this fall.

Campus-safety statistics tell families how many crimes occurred. Emergency plans tell administrators what to do. Missing-person protocols tell police whom to notify. None of them can measure what happens inside a family when the telephone rings.

For parents of a missing child, there may instead be an empty bedroom at home, a cellphone that doesn't answer and birthdays that continue arriving. Some families eventually buried their children. Others are still waiting to learn what happened.

And somewhere in Indiana this August, another mother or father will close a dormitory door, hug a son or daughter and begin the drive home. They will worry because parents always do, but they will also believe their child is beginning one of the best chapters of life.

Nearly every time, they will be right; sadly, some arn

The terrible exceptions—from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to Bloomington, West Lafayette, Terre Haute, Study Abroad Programs, and down to Evansville—remind us why universities, police, students, roommates and parents must do everything possible to keep student life safe. Students need to learn nothing good happens after 10 PM....